We've talked about this before — my alternate Oscar picks are not exactly the same thing as my favorite movies. More of a case of me trying to narrow the field to something like a general consensus, and then counting on the crowdsourced wisdom of my movie-loving readers to pick the winners.
From time to time I'll squeeze in a personal favorite I feel has been overlooked but I rarely foist my idiosyncrasies on the world through my blog — I reserve that for face-to-face interactions with my friends and family. Poor bastards.
Never has the gap between the consensus and my personal favorites been greater than in 1995. Don't know why. I like to think I know an entertaining, well-made movie when I see one, but for some reason, many of my favorites from '95 missed with audiences, critics or both.
And vice versa.
Anyway, I posted a picture at the top of my favorites. The consensus picks (based on pure math) are below. Of them, I chose Toy Story as best picture because it was the first Pixar feature and a real groundbreaker. But I also like Apollo 13, Babe and Before Sunrise, and maybe you're a fan of one of the others. As always, the choice is yours.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule is back, baby! After a two and a half year sabbatical, Dennis Cozzalio has picked up his blogging pen again — great news for those of us who live and breath the movies.
And he's announced his presence with authority, let me tell you, in the form of a new quiz, "Mr. Jim McAllister's Politically Significant, Ethically Questionable, Anti-History- Repeating-Itself Spring Term Movie Quiz." It's a long one. Settle in.
1) Movie that best reflects, describes or embodies the tenor of our times
I grew up in the South and majored in American history at Vanderbilt, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that Americans have only ever liked democracy when the people who get elected look like the face they see in the mirror every morning. Otherwise, they'll move heaven and earth to make damn sure that democracy doesn't work at all (see, e.g., Jim Crow).
But rather than dwelling on our national and individual shortcomings, how about a movie reminding us how democracy is supposed to work and occasionally does work when we put in the effort. How about we all sit down and re-watch Steven Spielberg's Lincoln — and this time, let's take notes!
2) Favorite Don Siegel movie not starring Clint Eastwood
The best Don Siegel movie, with or without Clint Eastwood, is the original sci-fi horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Running it a close second is Charlie Varrick, starring Walter Matthau in one of his very best performances as a small-time crook who knocks over a bank only to discover it's the mob's money he's stolen — and boy, are they pissed!
Third is Dirty Harry which does star Clint Eastwood. Great cop movie even if it is so hellbent to turn the United States Constitution into a whipping boy, it never bothers to find out how it actually works.
But my favorite Don Siegel movie is The Big Steal from 1949 starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. It's a lightning fast romantic comedy disguised as a film noir. The story? Odd couple Mitchum and Greer, thrown together from necessity, chase a thief (Patric Knowles) through the mountains of Mexico while they themselves are being chased by the long arm of the law (William Bendix). Nice supporting work from Ramon Novarro who played the title character in the 1925 silent version of Ben-Hur).
3) Your favorite movie theater, now or then
That would be the AFI-Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland, a restored art deco film palace that is home to the East Coast branch of the American Film Institute.
4) You’re booking this Friday and Saturday night at that theater—What are the double features for each night?
I've said it before but what the hell, I'll say it again — double features are an L.A. thing. They haven't shown double features east of the Mississippi River in at least fifty years ...
But I'll play your game.
First up is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) paired with John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). You ever wonder why your Uncle Fud has turned into a raging lunatic? It's not Facebook or Fox News or none of that there — he's been replaced by an evil alien from outer space.
We'll follow that up on Saturday with a pair of redhead romances — Holiday (1938), starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and The Quiet Man (1952) with Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne. Why? Because redheads rule and it's my make-believe theater so why not?
5) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr?
Wendy Hiller was great in Pygmalion, I Know Where I'm Going!, and she won an Oscar for Separate Tables, but I'm a Deborah Kerr man through and through. She was great at playing hot nuns (Black Narcissus, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison) and singing teachers (The King and I) but was perhaps at her best rolling around in the surf with Burt Lancaster in From Here To Eternity.
6) Last movie seen in a theater/on physical media/by streaming
In a theater? The Blues Brothers at, where else, the AFI-Silver. Daniel de Visé was signing copies of his book about the movie's making. A really fun musical comedy, starring John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, with great performances by a number of blues legends. Saw it in the theater back in 1980, seen it many times since.
The last new movie we saw in a theater was Dune: Part 2. Highly recommended if you've seen Dune: Part 1 and you're into big screen sci-fi that almost makes sense.
On physical media? Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson's whimsical paean to the Boy Scouts. Picked it up on DVD at the local library (which reminds me — it's due back today). Recommended if you're a fan of Wes Anderson or the Boy Scouts.
Streaming? The Battle of Algiers on the Criterion Channel — a war picture told in a documentary style about France's doomed effort to hang onto their colony in northern Africa. I'd say Algeria was France's Vietnam except Vietnam was France's Vietnam. A mess, though, that's for sure. It's hard holding onto real estate that never belonged to you in the first place.
7) Name a young actor in modern films who, either physically or by personality, reminds you of an actor from the age of classic movies
Honestly, who knows what the kids are up to these days ...
8) Favorite film of 2014
The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson's best movie which I reviewed here.
Also a fan of (in alphabetical order) Birdman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar, John Wick and The Lego Movie.
9) Second-favorite Louis Malle film
Let me just say I'm not a big fan of Louis Malle. My favorite is Atlantic City, which isn't saying much, so my second favorite is probably Elevator to the Gallows, which isn't saying anything at all.
10) The Ladykillers (2004 Coen Bros. version)—yes or no?
It doesn't hold a candle to the original starring Alec Guinness, but if you're a completionist, sure, see it. Just don't make it your first (or tenth) Coen Brothers movie. Stars a very un-Tom Hanks-like Tom Hanks.
11) Andy Robinson (Scorpio) or Richard Widmark (Tommy Udo)?
A couple of twitchy, giggling psychos, Andy Robinson in Dirty Harry, Richard Widmark inventing the type in Kiss of Death. Both are great, but Widmark is one of the titans of the film noir movement plus his Tommy Udo pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs — what's not to love?
12) Best horror movie from the past ten years
Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele.
13) Upcoming movie release you have the highest hopes for in 2024
Deadpool & Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Guaranteed hoot!
14) Movie you’re looking forward to this year that would surprise people or make them consider that you might have finally cracked up.
I want to know who thinks I haven't cracked up ...
15) Favorite AIP one-sheet
I had to look up AIP — refers to American International Pictures which churned out a boatload of cheap sci-fi and exploitation schlock for the drive-ins between 1955 and 1979 — Girls in Prison, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, that sort of thing. In the late '70s, AIP tried its hand at bigger budget movies, for example, Force 10 From Navarone, but that didn't work out and AIP wound up merging with Filmways that then turned into Orion Pictures. AIP recently relaunched under its original name, but I don't think we're talking about any of that. I think we mean the schlock.
Favorite one-sheet (i.e., movie poster)? Couldn't tell you. But I will say the best AIP movies are the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe, all but one of which star Vincent Prince. And the best of these are The Pit and the Pendulum and The Raven.
16) Catherine Spaak or Daniela Giordano?
This is a repeat of a question from April 2015. A couple of models, French and Italian respectively, who played supporting roles in European horror movies in the '60s and '70s. Or some such. Didn't know them then, don't know them now. Am I supposed to?
17) Favorite film of 1994
The Shawshank Redemption, followed by Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Bullets Over Broadway, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Ref, True Lies, Ed Wood, Serial Mom and Backbeat, more or less in that order.
18) Second-favorite Wim Wenders film
My favorite is Wings of Desire about an angel who longs to be human. Great movie, highly recommended with a great supporting performance by Peter Falk. Don't really have a second favorite although Harry Dean Stanton gave a very good performance in Paris, Texas.
19) Best performance by an athlete in a non-sports-oriented movie
Let's not over-think this: Jim Brown in The Dirty Dozen.
But don't sleep on Alex Karras in Blazing Saddles and Victor/Victoria. For a rough, tough sumbitch football player, he really had a gift for light comedy!
20) The cinema’s Best Appearance by A Piece of Fruit
Again, don't over-think it. The 1931 classic gangster movie, The Public Enemy, where James Cagney smashes Mae Clarke in the kisser with a grapefruit.
21) Favorite film of 1974
Chinatown, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in any order. Love them all.
22) Most would probably agree we are not currently living in a golden age of film criticism. Given that, who, among currently active writers, do you think best carries the torch for the form?
Let's face it, once Roger Ebert died, nobody.
23) Favorite movie theater snack(s)
I only ever eat popcorn at the movies, and that was true even before they gutted me like a fish.
24) Marion Lorne or Patricia Collinge?
Specifically, for playing mothers in Alfred Hitchcock movies. Marion Lorne, who went on to play Aunt Clara on television's Bewitched, was Robert Walker's mom in Strangers on a Train. Patricia Collinge was Teresa Wright's mom in Shadow of a Doubt. Neither are going to win mother of the year awards.
I really have no opinion.
25) Recent release you wish you’d seen on a big screen
We kept meaning to see Guy Ritchie's World War II action flick The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, but never got around to it. Would also like to see Hit Man, but I don't feel like driving down to Silver Spring for that.
26) Favorite supporting performance in a Sam Peckinpah film
All of them in The Wild Bunch — Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Bo Hopkins, Dub Taylor. Great cast led by William Holden in one of his best roles which I wrote about here.
27) Strother Martin or L.Q. Jones?
Ah, a natural follow-up to the previous question. They play a couple of toothless peckerwoods hired to track down William Holden and the gang in The Wild Bunch. You just know they're more likely to shoot each other in the foot than survive a showdown with that band of murdering cutthroats.
Strother Martin was also in Cool Hand Luke and an episode of Lost in Space so he gets the easy nod from me.
28) Current actor whose star status you find partially or completely mystifying
Meryl Streep.
29) Reese Witherspoon – Election or Freeway?
Never heard of Freeway. On the other hand, I gave her an alternate Oscar for Election, so that.
30) Second-favorite Michael Ritchie film
A surprisingly decent director I really didn't know the name of. He directed The Bad News Bears (the Walter Matthau version), a couple of Fletch movies with Chevy Chase, and Robert Redford in The Candidate.
The Bad News Bears is the best, so I'm going with The Candidate.
31) Favorite theatrical moviegoing experience of the last three years (2021-2024)
Eddie Mueller presenting Out of the Past at the AFI-Silver as part of his Noir City film festival. He also showed another movie that was a total gas but he specifically said we're not allowed to talk about it, so I won't.
32) Favorite Southern-fried movie sheriff
I would assume it's Joe Don Baker as Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall. He's actually the good guy even if he does tend to dispense justice with an axe handle.
33) Favorite film of 1954
Sabrina, Rear Window, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Caine Mutiny, Seven Samurai, the first half of Them!, William Holden's final speech in Executive Suite, the opening of Susan Slept Here and White Christmas, in that order, I think.
34) A 90-foot wall of water or the world tallest building on fire?
He means a couple of Irwin Allen disaster classics, Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. I saw the latter in the theater when I was a kid, but I think the former holds up better — Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters really chew the scenery.
But let's be honest, neither is as good as the first season of Allen's Lost in Space — the black-and-white episodes. Wrote way too much about it here.
35) Second-favorite Agnes Varda movie
French director. She made one fantastic movie, Cléo from 5 to 7 in 1962. Highly recommended. Never seen anything else by her.
36) Favorite WWII movie made between 1950 and 1975
That leaves out two of my all-times faves, Battleground and Twelve O'Clock High, both from 1949. So let's see. In chronological order, From Here to Eternity, Stalag 17, the last ten minutes of The Caine Mutiny where José Ferrer tears everybody a new one, The Guns of Navarone, The Longest Day, The Great Escape, The Train, The Dirty Dozen, Patton and Kelly's Heroes.
Take your pick.
37) After the disappointing (against predictions) box-office weekend for The Fall Guy, writer Matt Singer, perplexed by the relative indifference from ticket-buyers toward a film most expected to be a big hit, asked in his piece for Screengrab, “What the hell do people want from movies?” To focus the question slightly more narrowly, what the hell do you want out of movies?
You know what? Dune: Part 2 made a boatload of money. Inside Out 2 made a boatload of money. Last year Barbie and Oppenheimer made a boatload of money. Maybe nobody was in the mood to see a generic action picture based on a 1980s television show that even I can't remember.
38) Ned Sparks or Guy Kibbee?
A couple of character actors from the pre-Code era. Guy Kibbee was fat and funny, Ned Sparks was lean and snarky. They're both very good in Gold Diggers of 1933, a musical starring Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Aline MacMahon and somebody named Ginger Rogers. Check it out.
39) Favorite opening line in a movie
I answered this very question a year ago for a different Sergio Leone quiz. This is what I wrote:
Is a guitar chord an opening line? Because the opening chord of A Hard Day's Night sucks me into the movie every time.
Other contenders: William Holden's opening monologue while floating face down in a swimming pool (Sunset Boulevard), Julie Andrews singing "The hills are alive ..." (The Sound of Music), George C. Scott's rousing speech in Patton, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown ("All right, Curly, enough's enough. You can't eat the Venetian blinds. I just had 'em installed on Wednesday."), the clop-clopping of the coconuts in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the voice over in Apocalypse Now ("Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon."), the "Chapter One" business in Manhattan, Danny DeVito's voice over in L.A. Confidential, Sam Elliott's voice over in The Big Lebowski ...
Many others.
40) Best movie involving radio or a radio broadcast
Katherine and I just happened to rewatch Laura the other day. That film noir classic is narrated by a radio personality played by Clifton Webb in full blown deadpan snarker mode. Other great performances involving radio personalities: Monty Woolley in The Man Who Came to Dinner and Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam. Probably others ...
41) Buddy Buddy—yes or no?
Late Billy Wilder comedy starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Look, I love all of those guys, but Billy Wilder lost his touch sometime after The Apartment (One Two Three was his last good movie) and never got it back.
42) Favorite film of 1934
The Thin Man, by a wide margin. In my personal top ten all-time movies. Nick and Nora Charles (the incomparable William Powell and Myrna Loy) are the greatest husband and wife team in the history of movies. They make marriage and murder a stone groove.
I dig em both and if you track down the Ernst Lubitsch comedy classic Trouble in Paradise, you can have them both. I wrote about it here.
Miriam Hopkins was also terrific in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and Design for Living, another pre-Code Lubitsch comedy based on a Noel Coward play about a threesome between Hopkins, Gary Cooper and Fredric March. Racy. I wrote about her here and here.
As for Kay Francis, she made a pair of movies in 1932 with William Powell that I'm very fond of, One-Way Passage and Jewel Robbery. The first is a sudsy romance between two doomed passengers on an ocean liner, one (Powell) a convicted murder on the way to his execution, the other (Francis), a dying cancer patient. The second is a romantic crime picture, with Powell playing a sophisticated jewel thief who compels his victims (including Francis) to smoke a funny cigarette (I think they call it mary-ju-wanna) that turns them all into giggling nitwits and, more importantly, unreliable witnesses. Fun stuff.
44) What’s the oddest thing a movie theater employee has ever said to you?
I've tried very hard to never interact with a movie theater employee (or anybody else for that matter) beyond "two, please." So far, so good.
45) Is there such a thing as an ideal running time for a movie?
Well, Casablanca was an hour and forty minutes, Citizen Kane was two hours on the nose. If you're going longer than that, you better be making a best picture winner.
Shorter, on the other hand, is always good.
46) Favorite Roger Corman movie(s)
Those Edgar Allan Poe movies I mentioned, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Raven, both starring Vincent Price. The Raven also features Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and an incredibly young Jack Nicholson. Fun and funny. Check it out.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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